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free with them; diftribute my fortune; make me rich. If this confideration reftrains you to-day, it will reftrain you to-morrow; if to-morrow, it will restrain you you all If it has no power to restrain you, die! you are below my

care.

your life.

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THE courfe of my laft speculation led me in

fenfibly into a fubject, upon which I always meditate with great delight, I mean the immortality of the foul. I was yesterday walking alone in one of my friend's woods and loft myself in it very agreeably, as I was running over in my mind the feveral arguments that establish this great point, which is the basis of morality, and the fource of all the pleafing hopes and fecret joys that can arife in the heart of a reasonable creature. I confidered those several proofs drawn,

Firft, From the nature of the foul itself, and particularly its immateriality; which, though not absolutely necessary to the eternity of its duration, has, I think, been evinced to almost a demonftration.

Secondly, From its paffions and fentiments, as particularly from its love of existence, its horror of annihilation, and its hopes of immortality, with that fecret fatisfaction which it finds in the practice of virtue, and that uneafsiness which follows in it upon the commiffion of vice.

Thirdly, from the nature of the fupreme Being, whose justice, goodness, wisdom and veracity, are all concerned in this great point.

But among these, and other excellent arguments for the immortality of the foul, there is one drawn from the perpetual progress of the foul to its perfection, without a poffibility of ever arriving at it; which is a hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved by others who. have written on this fubject, though it feems to me to carry a great weight with it. How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the foul, which is capable of fuch immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity fhall fall away into nothing almoft as foon as it is created? Are fuch abilities made for no purpose? A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass In a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of; and were he to live ten thousand more, would be the same thing he is at present. Were a human foul thus at a ftand in her accomplishments, were her faculties to be full blown, and incapable of farther enlargements, I could imagine it might fall away infenfibly, and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being, that is in a perpetual

progrefs of improvements, and travelling on from perfection, to perfection, after having juft looked abroad into the works of its Creator, and made a few discoveries of his infinite goodness, wisdom, and power, must perish at her first setting out, and in the very beginning of her inquiries?

A man confidered in his prefent flate, feems only fent into the world to propagate his kind. He provides himself with a fucceffor, and immediately quits his poft to make room for him.

Hæres

Hæredem alterius, velut unda Supervenit undam.
Hor. lib. II Epift. 2. v. 175.

Heir urges on his predeceffor heir,

Like wave impelling wave.

He does not seem born to enjoy life, but to deliver it down to others. This is not surprising to confider in animals, which are formed for our ufe, and can finish their bufinefs in a fhort life. The filk-worm, after having spun her task, lays her eggs and dies. But a man can never have taken in his full measure of knowledge, has not time to fubdue his paffions, establish his foul in virtue, and come up to the perfection of his nature, before he is hurried off the ftage. Would an infinitely wife Being make fuch glorious creatures for fo mean a purpose ? Can he delight in the production of fuch abortive intelligences, fuch fhort-lived reasonable beings? Would he give us talents that are not to be exerted? Capacities that are never to be gratified? How can we find

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that wisdom, which fhines through all his works, in the formation of man, without looking on this world as only a nursery for the next, and believing that the feveral generations of rational creatures, which rife up and disappear in fuch quick fucceflions, are only to receive their firft rudiments of exiitence here, and afterwards to be tranfplanted into a more friendly climate, where they may spread and flourish to all eternity?

There is not, in my opinion, a more pleafing and triumphant confideration in religion than this, of the perpetual progress which the foul makes towards the perfection of its nature, without ever arriving at a period in it. To look upon the foul as going on from strength to strength, to confider that the is to fhine for ever with new acceflions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that the will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge; carries in it fomething wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man. Nay, it must be a prospect pleafing to God himself, to fee his creation for ever beautifying in his eyes, and drawing nearer to him by greater degrees of resemblance.

Methinks this fingle confideration, of the progrefs of a finite fpirit to perfection, will be fufficient to extinguifh all envy in inferior natures, and all contempt in fuperior. That cherub, which now appears as a God to a human foul, knows very well, that the period will come about in eternity, when the human foul fhall be as perfect as he himself now is Nay, when she shall

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